Red terror: Villagers vacate homes in cut-off area

Malkangiri: Fearing threat to their lives from Maoists, twelve families of Ramaguda village under Andrapalli panchayat in cut-off area vacated their houses and stayed put at their relatives’ place in Kamaraguda, official sources said here on Saturday.

Out of 15 families in Ramaguda, members of 12 families have moved out of their houses leaving behind food grains and cattle in the village after frequent tortures were inflicted on them by naxals, complained some villagers.

Meanwhile, whereabouts of other families of the village are yet to be known.

The frightened villagers alleged that the rebels tortured them by assaulting them following the joint operation of Andhra-Odisha police in which 24 naxals were killed in October last year. Besides, the ultras had threatened the villagers to punish them in praja court trial in case they inform police about the ordeal.

The red rebels had killed two villagers after a praja court trial at Damagada on May 3.